


champagne problems

by zoinkstothemax



Series: this pain wouldn't be for evermore [2]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Angst, Bipolar Disorder, Bipolar Ian Gallagher, Hurt No Comfort, I'm so sorry :((, Insecurity, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Season/Series 10, Self-Hatred, we all know how it ends though !
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-16 15:42:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28833609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoinkstothemax/pseuds/zoinkstothemax
Summary: “It’s not personal - Mickey, I love you,” Mickey is walking away from him, and Ian can’t keep up. He can never fucking keep up, he’s so tired of trying to keep up. So ashamed that he can’t.AKA: Season 10 proposal scenes extensions (inspired by champagne problems by Taylor Swift)
Relationships: Ian Gallagher & Mickey Milkovich, Ian Gallagher/Mickey Milkovich
Series: this pain wouldn't be for evermore [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2087658
Kudos: 60





	champagne problems

**Author's Note:**

> Part two of my evermore series, and this one is sad because this song is sad and so is Ian :(( but! we all know they're going to be okay! Just.....not in this fic lmao

_Your heart was glass, I dropped it._

“I don’t know, I didn’t think we were gonna be having this fucking conversation today,” Ian tries to explain, tries to reason. He absolutely cannot stand the look on Mickey’s face right now, especially the fact that he put it there.

“Then why the _fuck_ did you bring it up?” Mickey’s voice cracks, and Ian’s chest hurts. “This whole thing was your fuckin’ idea, you talked me into this shit.”

“I know - I _know_ ,” because he _does_. This is his own fault, and he is so fucking desperate to clean up this mess. But all day, he hasn’t been able to stop rifling through memories of Frank and Monica, his siblings’ shitty relationships, his _own_ constant fuckups. He needs Mickey to understand, even though he himself doesn’t, not really. He goes on, “Frank and Monica aren’t exactly the fuckin’ picture of marital bliss, okay? I don’t really have a frame of reference to connect this shit to-”

“Oh, poor fucking you.”

“It’s not _personal_ -” it isn’t. 

“It’s fine. It’s fine.” It isn’t.

“It’s not personal - Mickey, I _love you_ ,” Mickey is walking away from him, and Ian can’t keep up. He can never fucking keep up, he’s so tired of trying to keep up. So ashamed that he can’t. He tries anyway, following him through the lobby and out the door. He stands at the top of the steps and knows exactly what Mickey’s face is doing even though he’s turned away, knows his hands are shaking as he lights his smoke. Ian is actively hurting him, hurting them, and anything he does or says will hurt them more. Still, he tries again to explain what’s holding him back, what’s stopping him from taking this step that he really fucking wishes he could take.

“It’s marriage that I don’t know if I love, you know? Maybe, I don’t know, but you’re right, it is really fucking important, so can we just talk about it for one second, _please_?” Mickey still isn’t facing him, and Ian knows he’s losing him, has maybe already lost him. He knows Mickey feels betrayed, abandoned, shattered, even. Still, he self-sabotages, twists the knife further into his own gut, and stutters out, “I wanna know how you feel, you know?”

And he knows as he’s saying it that it’s the absolute worst thing he could have said. 

Mickey hasn’t hit him in a long time. In some fucked up way, it’s kind of nostalgic. Comforting, even, as sick as that thought is. He lands on his back at the bottom of the stairs, and the pain shooting up his leg is no worse than the pain in his chest and his gut and his head have been in for the last half hour. Mickey’s standing over him, scared and guilty and hurt and pissed, his hands shaking as he pulls out his phone and calls an ambulance, face tilting up and eyes blinking away tears. 

As they wait, Mickey sits on the steps, too far away to touch, his watery gaze flickering between Ian’s leg and the street in front of them, resolutely avoiding eye contact. Ian’s leg has gone numb along with the rest of him, and when he’s loaded into the ambulance, he turns his head to see Mickey walking away.

* * *

_I never was ready, so I watched you go_.

Mickey closes the door behind him and doesn’t look back as he climbs back up the stairs. Back to _Byron_. Ian feels like he clawed out a piece of his chest and took it with him when he left, and he knows he deserves it. 

But shit, he really is trying his best, and he knows he’s hurt Mickey a thousand fucking times, but what had he said? _“You’re just saying you don’t love me enough now.”_ Shit, if that’s really what he thinks, Ian is just fucking out of options, because he’d thought they were well past that. He’d thought _that_ , at least, was a universally accepted truth: Ian loves Mickey, and Mickey loves Ian, and that was always going to be true whether they were together or not. It had always been true before, when they were separated. Ian loved him when he was in juvie, and when Ian ran away, and when Mickey went to prison, and when he’d watched him drive across the border. He loves him now, and Ian can’t trust himself on most things but he _knows_ he can trust that more than anything else.

But as Ian hobbles away from the apartment, he thinks maybe this really is it. Ten years of fighting tooth and nail to stay together and what tore them apart for good wasn’t Terry or prison or Mexico, but Ian’s own inability to grow the fuck up and let them be happy. That’s what this really is, right? Ian can’t trust himself to make Mickey happy, can’t let go of this fear that he’s just _too much_ , that Mickey doesn’t deserve to deal with _all the fucking versions_ of him. 

So he shuffles down the sidewalk, the crutches making him feel even more pathetic, like they’re mocking the tears blurring his vision. 

He pisses in Byron’s stupid fucking bike thing because he can, and it doesn’t lighten the pressure in his chest at all. He continues his trek home, his shoulder and hand burning where Mickey had touched him for the first time in days, unable to rid his mind of that resigned look Mickey’d had on his face. The rings are heavy in his pocket and around his neck, an impossible weight dragging him down as he makes his way up the stairs and into their bed - his bed? He looks around their - his room, blinks up at the ceiling, wonders if Mickey’s smell will ever leave the pillows. He thinks maybe Mickey’s thinking of him too, and that gives him a little bit of hope.

He goes back downstairs and sleeps on the couch.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> So, I couldn't pick one lyric for this song because it's my favorite on the album and the one that inspired this whole series. Sorry ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ 
> 
> Thank you for the kind words on part one! I am a whore for Words of Affirmation so comments are very appreciated! I am extraordinarily inactive on Tumblr (zoinkstothemax) but I do check my inbox every once in a while if you are so inclined! Once again, I don't have an update schedule because I am 1) a student and 2) an essential worker - I write when I feel like it! But I promise I will finish!


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